[comp.text.tex] web2c 5.84b released

karl@CS.UMB.EDU (Karl Berry) (04/17/91)

I have released a new version of web2c, the base of Unix TeX.  You can
get it by ftp from the following.  Please use the geographically
nearest site.
 
The web2c* files are the change files and other program.  The web.*
files are the original WEB sources (from labrea.stanford.edu), put into
the directory arrangement the Makefiles and such expect.
 
Send bug reports to me.
 
        ftp.cs.umb.edu [192.12.26.23]:pub/tex/{web,web2c}.tar.Z   [Boston]
        ics.uci.edu [128.195.1.1]:pub/TeX/{web,web2c}.tar.Z       [California]
 
Thanks to all the many people who contributed to this release; I tried
to record the names in the ChangeLog.
 
karl@cs.umb.edu
 
 
This updates web2c to the latest master WEB sources, as released by
Knuth in March 1991.  Aside from the usual bug fixes and
(mis)improvements in the installation, I made the following changes.
(TeX 3.14 itself has no user-visible changes relative to 3.1.)
 
* format files are byte-order-independent, which is necessary (but not
  sufficient) for sharing them across architectures.  If the format
  creates any glue_ratio words in TeX's memory, the .fmt file will not
  be sharable, since it will have floating-point; but the common
  formats don't do this, so they *are* sharable.
 
* mackay@cs.washington.edu contributed a new SunView driver for Metafont.
 
* Metafont uses the MFTERM environment variable to figure out what kind
  of display it's on (if MFTERM isn't set, MF still tries to figure it
  out based on the terminal type).
 
* the default BibTeX has increased table sizes.
 
* filenames like `foo.bar.tex' are allowed; `foo' is tried before
  `foo.tex'.
 
* tftopl and pltotf operate silently by default (-verbose to get status
  reports).
 
* you can specify where gftodvi typesets the overflow labels; and it
  operates silently by default (-verbose to get the status reports).